Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ( 1958 ) Approved | | Drama , Romance | 20 September 1958 (USA) Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player, drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife, Maggie. His reunion with his father, Big Daddy, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.

Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 25 titles created 04 Jul 2013 a list of 42 titles created 14 Dec 2014 a list of 44 titles created 27 Feb 2015 a list of 48 titles created 11 months ago a list of 28 titles created 5 months ago Title: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) 8.1/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 6 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 10 nominations. See more awards » Photos Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her. Director: Elia Kazan Sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates.

Director: George Stevens Accused barn burner and con man Ben Quick arrives in a small Mississippi town and quickly ingratiates himself with its richest family, the Varners. Director: Martin Ritt A bitter, aging couple, with the help of alcohol, use a young couple to fuel anguish and emotional pain towards each other. Director: Mike Nichols The only son of wealthy widow Violet Venable dies while on vacation with his cousin Catherine. What the girl saw was so horrible that she went insane; now Mrs. Venable wants Catherine lobotomized to cover up the truth. Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz A poor boy gets a job working for his rich uncle and ends up falling in love with two women. Director: George Stevens Honest and hard-working Texas rancher Homer Bannon has a conflict with his unscrupulous, selfish, arrogant and egotistical son Hud, who sank into alcoholism after accidentally killing his brother in a car crash. Director: Martin Ritt A rebellious young man with a troubled past comes to a new town, finding friends and enemies. Director: Nicholas Ray A wilful young man contends against his brother for the attention of their religious father while reconnecting with his estranged mother and falling for his brother's girlfriend.

Director: Elia Kazan Drifter Chance Wayne returns to his hometown after many years of trying to make it in the movies. Arriving with him is a faded film star he picked up along the way, Alexandra Del Lago. ... See full summary » Director: Richard Brooks An up-and-coming pool player plays a long-time champion in a single high-stakes match. Director: Robert Rossen A Manhattan call girl has a tragic affair with a rich married man. Director: Daniel Mann Edit Storyline The family of who is "affectionately" known as "Big Daddy" Pollitt convenes at his and Big Momma's vast 28,000 acre East Mississippi plantation for his sixty-fifth birthday, although it may as well be for his funeral on the belief that he is dying. Despite his latest medical report being clean, in reality he truly does have terminal colon cancer, something the doctor only tells Big Daddy's two sons, Gooper Pollitt, a lawyer, and Brick Pollitt, who recently left his job as a sportscaster. Brooding Brick and his wife Maggie Pollitt, who have driven up from New Orleans for the occasion, are going through a long rough patch in their marriage.

Brick wanted to split, but Maggie convinced him to stay married on the condition that she not pressure him for sex. In their troubles, Brick has turned to the bottle, a drunken incident which has left Brick currently on crutches. Maggie believes Gooper and his wife Mae Pollitt are trying to orchestrate Brick out of Big Daddy's will, Brick and ... Written by Huggo See All (143) » Taglines: All the sultry drama of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize winning Play is now on the screen! See more » Genres: 20 September 1958 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Die Katze auf dem heißen Blechdach See more » Filming Locations: Mono (Perspecta Sound®) (Westrex Recording System) Color: Did You Know? Trivia Both Lana Turner and Grace Kelly were considered for the part of Maggie the Cat. See more » Goofs Maggie removes the gift card from the envelope twice. See more » Quotes Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : We've still got one thing on our side. No, two things. Are my seams straight? Big Daddy dotes on you, Brick.

He can't stand Brother Man and Brother Man's wife. That fertility monster, she's downright odious to him, I can tell. That's the second thing we've got on our side. He likes me. The way he looks me up and down and over, he's still got an eye for girls. Brick Pollitt : That kind of talk is disgusting. Margaret "Maggie" Pollitt : Did anybody ever tell you you're a back-aching Puritan, Brick? I think it's a fine thing that a man on ... A powerful Burl Ives livens up a simple story 19 December 2009 | by hall895 (New Jersey) – See all my reviews The best thing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has going for it is one truly remarkable acting performance. And that performance comes from neither Elizabeth Taylor nor Paul Newman. There's nothing wrong with the work turned in by Taylor and Newman, they are both perfectly fine in their roles. And it is their characters who are the focus for most of the film. But late on in the proceedings Burl Ives grabs hold of the film and makes it his own.

Ives turns in a performance which is so strong and powerful that it threatens to overshadow and overwhelm everything else in the film. However it is rather difficult to overshadow Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. And the film's rather simple story is certainly compelling enough so as not to be overwhelmed by the Ives tour de force near the end. So while Ives may end up being the most memorable thing the film has to offer he is certainly not the only memorable thing. His great performance is merely the best part of what is an overall thoroughly satisfying film. The film's simple story centers around a day in the life of a wealthy Southern family. With this family the key word is "mendacity". What does that even mean? Any of our characters who initially don't know about mendacity surely will by the time the story plays itself out. As we meet them everyone has come together to celebrate the 65th birthday of family patriarch Big Daddy. Initially it seems the film is about Big Daddy's son Brick and his wife Maggie the Cat. Brick and Maggie are not currently in the throes of wedded bliss. To say their relationship is strained would be putting it mildly.

The fact that alcohol seems to be the only thing in life Brick is at all interested in probably does not help matters. But as the film progresses we see there is a larger issue than Brick and Maggie's troubled marriage. Big Daddy is dying. And nobody, not his family and not his doctors, has the guts to tell him. This will ultimately play itself out in powerful, heartrending fashion. For much of the film's running time you would call it compelling but certainly not spectacular. But then Ives, as Big Daddy, grabs the film by its throat and shakes some real life into it. There's a scene where Ives as Big Daddy and Newman as Brick are alone in a basement which simply could not have been performed any better. There's so much these characters have to say to one another. The emotion is raw and the scene is so powerful. It hits you right in the heart. Just this one scene alone, with these two great actors, elevates the film all by itself. Newman is terrific. Ives is astounding. Perhaps it is in fact possible to overshadow Elizabeth Taylor. Maybe just this once. Maggie the Cat is an intriguing character in her own right and Taylor certainly doesn't disappoint in the role.

But it turns out that ultimately the film is really about the relationship between Brick and his father, not Brick and his wife. And as such it is Newman, and most especially Ives, who you will most remember. It is their work which transforms a good movie into something truly memorable. 16 of 20 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: Character Profiles | Novelguide Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: Character Profiles Average Overall Rating: 4 Total Votes: 2436 Brick : Brick Pollitt is the twenty-seven-year-old son of Big Daddy, and husband of Margaret (Maggie). He is a former star athlete who played professional football. A spinal injury ended his career, and he then became a sports announcer. His best friend was also a pro football player, named Skipper. Skipper was sexually attracted to Brick but when he confessed this to Brick on the telephone, Brick hung up the phone without a word. Brick claims not to be homosexual, and he believes that his friendship with Skipper was abnormal only in the sense that it was pure and true-qualities that he does not find anywhere else in life.

Shortly after making that phone call, Skipper, rejected by his best friend, died of alcohol and drug abuse. Brick, possibly feeling guilty about Skipper's death, began to drink heavily. He also withdrew affection from his wife, refusing to sleep with her. This is the situation when the play begins. Maggie, who loves Brick, pleads with him to change his ways. But Brick's manner is detached, as if he is indifferent to life. He hides behind a wall of emotional reserve. During the play he makes countless trips to the liquor cabinet. He says he has to drink until he gets a "click" in his head that makes him peaceful. He hobbles around on a crutch because he broke his ankle trying to jump hurdles on the high school athletic field the night before. He was drunk at the time. Brick is the favorite son of Big Daddy, despite the fact that he is eight years younger than Gooper. But Big Daddy is concerned about his son's drinking and tries to get Brick to talk about the cause of it.

Although the truth does comes out, it does not seem to help Brick move beyond what Tennessee Williams described as his state of "moral paralysis." Doctor Baugh: Doctor Baugh is the Pollitt family doctor. He observed the examination of Big Daddy at the Ochsner Clinic and is involved in the plan to keep the truth from Big Daddy about his cancer. In Act 3, he informs Big Mama of the diagnosis. He is pleasant to her but cold towards Gooper. Big Daddy: Big Daddy is the husband of Big Mama and the father of Gooper and Brick. He is "a tall man with a fierce, anxious look" (p. 65). Big Daddy is a self-made man and proud of it. He left school at the age of ten, and worked in the fields. Then he rose to be overseer of the Straw and Ochello cotton plantation; on the death of Straw he became a partner. He built the plantation up until it occupied twenty-eight thousand acres of the finest land in the Delta. Big Daddy has been married for over forty years to Big Mama, but he cannot stand the sight of her, even though she is devoted to him.

Nor does he care for Gooper and Mae and their children, although he pretends to. He says he is sick of all the lies and hypocrisy he has had to out up with all those years. He seems to believe that because he has not being truthful about his real feelings, the other members of his family have not been either. His favorite son is Brick, whom he genuinely loves. He wants to help Brick stop drinking. Big Daddy is suffering from terminal cancer, but the truth is being kept from him by the family. He has been told that all he suffers from is a "spastic colon." Big Daddy finds out the truth from Brick, and he is angry at the lie he has been told by the rest of the family. His tragedy is that he must die surrounded by a family that would not be honest with him. Dixie: Dixie is one of Mae and Gooper's five children. She appears late in Act 1, when she bursts in on Maggie and Brick, firing her cap pistol at Maggie. She shows that she listens to her parents' conversation because she taunts Maggie for being childless. Gooper: Gooper is Big Daddy's eldest son, and Mae's husband.

He is a corporate lawyer in Memphis, and he is plotting to ensure that he and Mae inherit the plantation. He has already drawn up a plan for a trusteeship, with him in control, which he wants Big Mama to sign. Big Daddy dislikes Gooper, however, and although Gooper claims to love Big Daddy in a quiet way, he later admits he has always resented the fact that Big Daddy prefers Brick. He tries to undermine Brick whenever he can, bringing attention to his drinking, for example. Gooper claims that he has helped a lot in running the plantation but Big Mama says that all he did was take care of a few business details. Lacey: Lacey is a black servant of the Pollitt family. Mae: Mae is married to Gooper. She has five children and is pregnant with a sixth. Maggie calls her a "monster of fertility" (p. 22). Mae was once the "cotton carnival queen," but her family is not as well-to-do as Gooper thinks they are. Mae is determined to ensure that she and Gooper inherit the Pollitt property, and she is in a fierce contest with Maggie over this issue.

She listens at night to what goes on between Brick and Maggie in the adjoining room so she can report it back to Big Mama and so undermine Brick's position. Mae is also a snob who is unhappy about her failure to get accepted by the smartest young married set in Memphis, a failure that she attributes to Big Mama's vulgar behavior. Big Mama: Big Mama is the wife of Big Daddy. She is a short, overweight, vulgar but sincere woman who wears expensive, flashy gems. She talks a lot and laughs a lot, mainly at herself. Much of this is an attempt to cover up the hurt she feels at her rejection by Big Daddy, who often makes cruel jokes at her expense. She loves her husband in spite of his cold attitude to her. Big Mama is initially told, as is Big Daddy, that he is suffering from no more than a "spastic colon," which she is only too ready to believe. Even when the family tells her the truth, in Act 3, she finds it difficult to accept. Her favorite son is Brick; she is aware that Gooper does not like his father, and she refuses to sign the papers he has prepared that would hand control of the plantation over to him and his wife.

In spite of the adversity she faces, Big Mama tries to hold her family together. She pleads in Act 3, "Oh, you know we just got to love each other an' stay together, all of us, just as close as we can" (pp. 161-62). Margaret: Margaret, known as Maggie, is Brick's wife. She is an attractive, vivacious, and tenacious woman. She and Brick have been married since they graduated from college. At first they were happy, but then Brick's friendship with Skipper came between them, or Maggie thought that it did. Maggie believed Skipper was a homosexual, and one day told him either to stop loving her husband or confess it to him. That night Skipper went to Maggie's room and tried to make love to her to prove that what she said about him was not true, but when he failed, he assumed it was. He went into a speedy decline and died of drink and drugs. Maggie therefore bears some responsibility for the course of events, a responsibility she accepts. But Brick punishes her by refusing to sleep with her anymore. She does not accept the situation between them, which is causing her deep distress.

She is determined to win back her husband's affection. She is also determined that Brick will inherit the property on Big Daddy's death. She grew up poor and does not want to grow old in the same condition. So Maggie, who is the "cat on a hot tin roof" of the title, struggles to get the upper hand over Mae and Gooper. She is in a difficult situation but she intends to fight as hard as she can to fulfil her dreams. She knows that if she and Brick could have a child, this would help their cause, and by end of the play she appears to have worn down her husband's resistance. Sookey : Sookey is one of the Pollitt family's black servants. He helps to bring in Big Daddy's birthday cake and champagne. Reverend Tooker: Reverend Tooker is the local preacher who attends Big Daddy's birthday party in Act 2 and the family gathering in Act 3. He is not an attractive character; his conversation consists mostly of dropping hints about how other local families have given generous endowments to churches when a family member died. He wants to ensure that his church receives a gift from the Pollitt estate when Big Daddy dies.

Big Daddy has no time for him and insults him. In the stage directions, Reverend Tooker is described as "the living embodiment of the pious, conventional lie" (p. 118). His practised smile is "as sincere as a bird call blown on a hunter's whistle." Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Plot and Cast | Movies.com DVD FULL SYNOPSIS This dynamic and commanding adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play focuses on a troubled Southern family and the discord over their dying father's millions. Wealthy plantation owner Big Daddy Pollitt (Burl Ives), celebrating his 65th birthday, is visited by his sons, Brick (Paul Newman) and Gooper (Jack Carson). He has cancer, but a doctor has deliberately and falsely declared it in remission. Seemingly perfect son Gooper and his wife, Mae (Madeleine Sherwood), have several children and are anxiously expecting to inherit Daddy's millions. By contrast, Big Daddy's "favorite," Brick, is a has-been football star who's taken to drinking his days away since the suicide of his "best friend" a year earlier.

He resents his wife, Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor), because he believes that she had an affair with his deceased friend. As a result, he refuses to sleep with her, although she remains devoted to him. Since Brick and Maggie have failed to produce any grandchildren, Big Daddy is inclined to leave his estate to Gooper, but Maggie attempts to prevent that by telling him that she is pregnant. Big Daddy knows better, yet he recognizes that Maggie loves Brick so much that she would be willing to do anything for him. Although Brick is self-destructive and resentful, unable to come to terms with his losses, it takes Big Daddy's recognition of his own mortality to make Brick change his perspective. Brick's struggle with his sexual identity, and the nature of his relationship with his "friend," had to be toned down for mass consumption, although this intelligently written and acted film covers such topics as infertility, adultery, and alcoholism that were still considered taboo in the 1950s. Newman brings depth and feeling to the role as Brick, while Taylor succeeds brilliantly in portraying Maggie as a passionate and understanding woman despite her own real-life emotional turmoil over the death of her husband at the time, producer Mike Todd.

~ Don Kaye, Rovi Release date:September 18, 1958 Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (film) - Wikiquote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (film) From Wikiquote Jump to: navigation , search Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a 1958 film about an alcoholic ex-football player who drinks his days away and resists the affections of his wife. His reunion with his father, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son. Directed by Richard Brooks . Written by Richard Brooks and James Poe , based on the play by Tennessee Williams . This is Maggie the Cat... taglines Contents 6 External links Maggie the Cat[ edit ] One of those no-neck monsters hit me with some ice cream. Their fat little heads sit on their fat little bodies without a bit of connection... You can't wring their necks if they got no necks to wring. Isn't that right, honey?... Think of it, they've got five monsters and number six comin' up. Truth! Truth! Everybody keeps hollerin' about the truth. Well, the truth is as dirty as lies.

Living with somebody you love can be lonelier than living entirely alone, if the one you love doesn't love you. Big Daddy[ edit ] But there's one thing you can't buy in a Europe firesale or in any other market on earth. And that's your life. You can't buy back your life when it's finished... The human animal is a beast that eventually has to die. And if he's got money, he buys and he buys and he buys. The reason why he buys everything he can is because his crazy hope is one of the things he buys will be life everlasting — which it never can be. What's that smell in this room? Didn't you notice it, Brick? Didn't you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?... There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity... You can smell it. It smells like death. Dialogue[ edit ] Maggie: Why can't you lose your good looks, Brick? Most drinkin' men lose theirs. Why can't you? I think you've even gotten better-lookin' since you went on the bottle. You were such a wonderful lover... You were so excitin' to be in love with.

Mostly, I guess, 'cause you were... If I thought you'd never never make love to me again... why, I'd find me the longest, sharpest knife I could and I'd stick it straight into my heart. I'd do that. Oh, Brick, how long does this have to go on? This punishment? Haven't I served my term? Can't I apply for a pardon? Brick: Lately, that finishin' school voice of yours sounds like you was runnin' upstairs to tell somebody the house is on fire. Maggie: Is it any wonder? You know what I feel like? I feel all the time like a cat on a hot tin roof. Brick: Then jump off the roof, Maggie, jump off it. Now cats jump off roofs and they land uninjured. Do it. Jump. Maggie: Jump where? Into what? Brick: Take a lover. Maggie: I don't deserve that! I can't see any man but you. With my eyes closed, I just see you. Why can't you get ugly, Brick? Why can't you please get fat or ugly or somethin' so I can stand it?

Brick: You'll make out fine. Your kind always does. Maggie: Oh, I'm more determined than you think. I'll win all right. Brick: Win what? What is, uh, the victory of a cat on a hot tin roof? Maggie: Just stayin' on it, I guess. As long as she can. Brick: Somethin' hasn't happened yet. Big Daddy: What's that? Brick: A click in my head. Big Daddy: Did you say "click"? Brick: Yes sir, the click in my head that makes me feel peaceful. Big Daddy: Boy, sometimes you worry me. Brick: It's like a switch, clickin' off in my head. Turns the hot light off and the cool one on, and all of a sudden there's peace. Big Daddy: Boy, you're, you're a real alcoholic! Brick: That is the truth. Yes, sir, I am an alcoholic. So if you'd just excuse me... Big Daddy: [grabbing him] No, I won't excuse you. Brick: Now I'm waitin' for that click and I don't get it.

Listen, I'm all alone. I'm talkin' to no one where there's absolute quiet. Big Daddy: You'll hear plenty of that in the grave soon enough. Big Daddy: But it's always there in the morning, ain't it — the truth? And it's here right now. You're just feelin' sorry for yourself. That's all it is — self-pity. You didn't kill Skipper. He killed himself. You and Skipper and millions like ya are livin' in a kid's world, playin' games, touchdowns, no worries, no responsibilities. Life ain't no damn football game. Life ain't just a bunch of high spots. You're a thirty-year-old kid. Soon you'll be a fifty-year-old kid, pretendin' you're hearin' cheers when there ain't any. Dreamin' and drinkin' your life away. Heroes in the real world live twenty-four hours a day, not just two hours in a game. Mendacity, you won't... you won't live with mendacity, but you're an expert at it.

The truth is pain and sweat and payin' bills and makin' love to a woman that you don't love any more. Truth is dreams that don't come true and nobody prints your name in the paper 'til you die... The truth is, you never growed up. Grown-ups don't hang up on their friends... and they don't hang up on their wives... and they don't hang up on life. Now that's the truth and that's what you can't face! Brick: Can you face the truth? Big Daddy: Try me! Brick: You or somebody else's truth? Big Daddy: Bull. You're runnin' again. Brick: Yeah, I am runnin.' Runnin' from lies, lies like birthday congratulations and many happy returns of the day when there won't be any. Big Daddy I'll outlive you. I'll bury you. I'll buy your coffin... It's death, ain't it? Brick: You said it yourself, Big Daddy. Mendacity is a system we live in. Big Daddy: I suddenly noticed that you don't call me Big Daddy any more. Ah, if you needed a Big Daddy, why didn't you come to me?

You wanted somebody to lean on. Why Skipper and why not me? I'm your father! I'm Big Daddy. Me! Why didn't you come to your kinfolks, the peoples that love ya? Brick: You don't know what love means. To you, it's just another four letter word. Big Daddy: Why, you've got a mighty short memory. What was there that you wanted that I didn't buy for ya. Brick: You can't buy love! You bought yourself a million dollars worth of junk. Look at it. Does it love you? Big Daddy: Who'd you think I bought it for? Me? It's yours. The place, the money, every rotten thing is yours! Brick: I don't want things! [pushes down and smashes vases, an old athletic trophy and other accumulated objects] Waste! Worthless! Worthless! [destroys a life-sized poster of himself throwing a football and then breaks down in a fit of uncontrollable tears] Big Daddy: Don't, son. Please don't cry, boy. That's funny. I never saw you cry before. How's that? Did you ever cry? Brick: Can't you understand?

I never wanted your place or your money or any—... I don't wanna own anything. All I wanted was a father, not a boss — I wanted you to love me. Big Daddy: I did and I do. Brick: No. Not me, and not Gooper, and not even Mama. Big Daddy: That's a lie. I did love her. I give her anything, everything she wanted. Brick: Things. Things, Papa. You gave her things. A house, a trip to Europe, all this junk, some jewelry, things. You gave her things, Papa, not love. Big Daddy: I gave, I gave her an empire, boy. Brick: The men who build empires die, and empires die, too. Big Daddy: No. No, it won't. That's why I've got you and Gooper. Brick: Look at Gooper. Look at what he's become. Is that what you wanted him to be? And look at me. You put it very well indeed. I'm a thirty-year-old kid, and pretty soon I'm gonna be a fifty-year-old kid. I don't know what to believe in.

Now what's the good of livin' if you've got nothin' to believe in? There's gotta be some, some purpose in life, some meanin.' Look at me. For the sake of God, look at me before it's too late. For once in your life, look at me as I really am. Look at me. I'm a failure. I'm a drunk. On my own in the open market, I'm not worth the price of a decent burial. Gooper: [Helping himself to some liquor] Brick... What, uh, what were you and Big Daddy talkin' about down there? Brick: Us. Mae: You ripped him apart, your own brother! Brick: You believe that Gooper? Gooper: [smiles] No. Mae: Well I do! Gooper: [undertone] Keep still. Brick: No, family crisis brings out the best and the worst in every member of the family. Gooper: That's the truth. Mae: [stalking over to her] You want to talk about the truth!? You're not pregnant. Gooper: Keep still, Mae. Mae: She made it up!

Gooper: [slightly angrily] I said shut up. Mae: Don't you try to kid us, Maggie. Brick: Mae. [she rounds on him] She's not kiddin' ya. Mae: How can she have a child by you!? When you won't even - ! Gooper: Mae, will you keep quiet! Mae: We occupy the next room, and the walls between aren't sound-proof! We hear the nightly pleadin', and the nightly refusal! Brick: Sister Woman, not everybody makes as much noise about love as you do. [Mae gasps in shock. Brick smiles and goes upstairs] Mae: [indignantly] Brick! I never thought that you would stoop to her level! Brick: Well, you heard what Big Daddy said. That girl's got life in her body. Mae: THAT'S A LIE! Brick: No! [chuckling] Oh, truth is something desperate, and Maggie's got it. Believe me, it is desperate, and she has got it. Mae: [Turning to Gooper] Why don't you say somethin' honey!? Gooper: Alright, honey... SHUT UP!

Brick: [calling downstairs] Maggie! Brick: Come on up hear. Maggie: [eagerly] Yes sir [Maggie goes upstairs, while Brick turns off the lights in their room] Gooper: [watching her go] Yup. That girl's got life on her alright. [Gooper smiles and raises his glass to her. Mae, who has collapsed on the stairs in defeat, looks up at him despairingly] This is Maggie the Cat... Every sultry moment of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize Play is now on the screen! SparkNotes: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Analysis of Major Characters Analysis of Major Characters Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Tennessee Williams Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Maggie The play's cat, Maggie, is a hysterical, dissatisfied woman left prostrate before a brick of a man, Brick. Maggie's loneliness lies in Brick's refusal to recognize her desire. His refusal to make her his desire has made her hard, nervous, and bitter. Imagined here as the woman constantly posing in the mirror, Maggie is perhaps the most fascinating character of the play. As Williams indicates, she holds the audiences transfixed.

The exhilaration of the play lies in the force of the audience's identification with its gorgeous heroine, a woman desperate in her sense of lack, masochistically bound to a man who do not want her, and made all the more beautiful in her envy, longing, and dispossession. Against the indifferent Brick, the frantic Maggie literally begins to fall to pieces. Throughout Act I, Maggie appears changing her clothes, posing before the mirror, preparing for the party. She appears at her most seductive and most vulnerable, utterly unable to lure her husband's desire. Indeed his gaze of disgust, freezing her in the mirror, precipitates her "hideous transformation" into "Maggie the Cat." Maggie's dispossession also lies in her childlessness. Her childlessness calls her status as wife and woman into question. As a childless woman she is a woman who lacks. Without a child, moreover, her and Brick's place in Big Daddy's household is not assured. Maggie is figured through a number of tropes of virginity.

Earlier she sarcastically refers to herself as "Saint Maggie"; at one point Mae enters toting her Diana trophy; at the close of the play, Mae will joke that the only way she could have conceived of a child is immaculately. The desperate Maggie is subject to a miserable second virginity, a virginity that stands, in the logic of the play, against the grotesqueness of fertility. At the risk of being glib, we should note also that Maggie's trophy symbolizes her status as a "trophy wife." Brick The favorite son and mourned lover, Brick possesses the charm of those who have given up and assumed a pose of indifference before the world. Brick embodies an almost archetypal masculinity, that of the self-possessed, self-contained, untouchable, and phallically intact man. Before this indifferent block, characters find themselves in the throes of desire (Maggie, Mama) or state of aggression (Daddy). At the same time, Brick is an obviously broken man. Turning from his homosexual desire for his dead friend Skipper, Brick has depressively withdrawn from the world behind a screen of liquor. He is reduced to the daily, mechanical search for his click that gives him peace.

Thus he would locate himself on the far side of the family drama. Brick's brokenness is materialized in his injury, a broken ankle incurred while jumping hurdles on the high school athletic field. In a sense, it is an injury incurred out of nostalgia for the early days of his friendship with Skipper, the time of what Maggie describes as their Greek legend. This injury, a wound in his otherwise intact masculinity, is also a figure for his castration, the unmanning implied in homosexual desire. Brick is brought to judgment on his desire twice in the place: first by Maggie in Act I and then by Daddy in Act II. When Daddy approaches what has been tenuously repressed, Brick desperately attempts to dodge him, emptying his words of all significance. As he tells Daddy, their talks never materialize: nothing is said. When Daddy presses him, Brick reveals why he yearns for "solid quiet," why he would deny that their talks take place anywhere or refer to anything: they are painful.

As Williams notes, Brick's horror at the thought of being identified with the litany of epithets that he recites ("Fairies") marks the extent of his internalization of the lie of conventional morality, the lie to which Mama pathetically clings and on which Maggie places her bets at the end of the play. Big Daddy Affectionately dubbed by Maggie as an old-fashioned "Mississippi redneck," Daddy is a large, brash, and vulgar plantation millionaire who believes he has returned from the grave. He loves Brick dearly, favoring him as his rightful heir. Though his coming death has been quickly repressed—as Freud notes, the unconscious can never know its own death—in some sense Daddy has confronted its possibility. His near-death is a limit experience. Daddy returns from death and dismisses the vanitas of his worldly possessions: a rich man cannot buy his life. After years with a woman he cannot stand, he is bent on acting on his desire in all its violence. Not only will he buy a beautiful woman, but he will smother her in minks, choke her with diamonds. Daddy is murderous in his fetishism.

As he will tell Brick, there is little shocking on the other side of the moon, "death's country." Daddy's sojourn in "death's country" perhaps explains his reminiscence of his world travels and the child prostitute in particular, his encounter with that which civilization would repress at all costs. In returning from death's country, Daddy would force his son to face his own desire. Big Mama Fat, breathless, sincere, earnest, bedecked in flashy gems, and occasionally grotesque, Mama is a woman embarrassingly dedicated to a man who despises her and in denial of his disgust. She is sympathetic as an object of pity, affection, and indulgence. She also favors Brick, investing him with all her hopes for the future of the family. As she implores in Act IV, Brick must carry on the family line, he must provide Big Daddy with a grandson as similar to he as he is to Daddy himself. Mama's moment of dignity comes upon the revelation of Daddy's cancer. Here she becomes a woman who, despite the humiliations, has stood by her man. The play is enamored and at the same time somewhat amused with this image of dogged feminine loyalty.

Notice Williams's humorously catty irony: as the stage notes indicate, Mama in her dignity almost stops being fat. More Help “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” And A Challenge To Manhood And Masculinity - shares Brick Pollitt risked being pegged as weak and less than a man when he ventured into territory that was unexplored at the time – the heart of a man. — A dysfunctional family before dysfunctional was a word, greed and avarice, alcoholism and “clicks,” smoldering but repressed sexuality, latent homosexuality – and lots and lots of mendacity. All those things and more are the ties that bind the Pollitt family in the 1958 film version of playwright Tennessee Williams’ smoldering stage play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Who would care today if Brick and pro football buddy Skipper had a bromance going, and would anyone blame Maggie the Cat if she jumped off the sizzling hot tin roof and into the bed of her husband’s gridiron hero? Tame stuff by contemporary mores, but steamy and scandalous material for a conservative and sedate 1950’s America.

Nonetheless, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” was a critical success with nary a bad review and, produced on an estimated budget of $3 million, hauled in a box office of more than $17 million domestically and $25 million worldwide – the equivalent today of nearly $140.5 million and more than $206.6 million, respectively. That commentary, ignored and not considered in 1958, remains as pertinent today as it did then, nearly 60 years ago. Yet an underlying commentary of the film went ignored by movie critics at the time if it was even considered at all, perhaps as taboo or too risky, namely the challenge to the social definition of masculinity and what was – and wasn’t – expected of a man. That commentary, ignored and not considered in 1958, remains as pertinent today as it did then, nearly 60 years ago. From that point of view, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” is Paul Newman’s vehicle from opening to final scene. We first see Newman’s character of Brick intoxicated and poised to reclaim a lost glory from his high school days by jumping high hurdles in an empty athletic field at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Against a backdrop of imagined cheers of onlookers long since gone, Brick clears two hurdles before crashing down onto the third one and breaking his ankle. Flash forward to Brick in pajamas on a sofa in a bedroom of his daddy’s majestic Mississippi mansion and nursing what we know to be yet another drink, a crutch straddled over his chest. The crutch comes later in the film to be symbolic of Brick’s other crutches – on alcohol, self-disgust over his inaction in football buddy Skipper’s suicide, on the walls he’s erected to keep wife Maggie the Cat at arm’s length and, above all, on his pain of being owned by Big Daddy instead of being loved as a son by a father. Enter wife Maggie, played flawlessly by a sultry and drop-dead gorgeous Elizabeth Taylor in what may well be her first bona fide role as a grown-up actress after a seemingly effortless transition to adulthood from child player and teenage ingenue.

As he professes to Big Daddy, Brick values himself as “not worth the cost of a decent burial.” Brick and Maggie are at Big Daddy’s mansion with Brick’s older brother, “Brother Man” Gooper, and his wife, “Sister Woman” Mae, who are circling in to claim their share of the Pollick spoils while awaiting news if Big Daddy is dying. He is, and his legacy to his kin is an estate valued at nearly $10 million – $82.6 million in today’s currency – and some of the richest acres in the whole of Mississippi. We learn quickly that Brick and Maggie don’t share a bed and are at odds for reasons not then disclosed. Maggie, sexually frustrated and childless, is desperate to re-ignite her passionless marriage to a husband who has abandoned his job as a sportscaster to take up “the occupation of drink,” as Maggie calls it. For his part, Brick seems resigned to a life forever tied to a wife he “cannot stand,” as failed owner of the defunct Dixie Stars pro football team and drowning his life’s permanent state of “mendacity” as a full-time alcoholic.

As he professes to Big Daddy, Brick values himself as “not worth the cost of a decent burial.” As the drama unfolds, Brick is alternately at war with Maggie and Big Daddy – and himself as he hints at the nature of his relationship to Skipper, a classic Tennessee Williams hint of homosexuality. But Newman, in a superlative turn that earned him his first Oscar nomination in a respected acting career, plays Brick as a man mortally wounded by the loss of an intense emotional relationship with someone who also happens to be a man. In Big Daddy’s world – and in Brick’s to a lesser extent – men don’t cry and emotional vulnerability is a weakness. An implication can be derived that the relationship between Brick and Skipper was not sexual but intensely emotional and filled Brick’s emotional void of a paternal role model and love.

That impression seems validated as Brick, baby-blue eyes moistened with tears, confesses to Big Daddy his “disgust” at himself for failing to rescue Skipper from a suicidal nosedive out of an 11th-floor window of a Chicago hotel, and, later, as he crumbles in emotional devastation in his ultimate confrontation with Big Daddy, wrapped up by Brick’s profession, “I wanted a father who loved me.” As Big Daddy, Burl Ives brings a commanding screen presence to the role. Born before the start of the 20th century, Big Daddy is a product of his time, a man defined by the social dictate that a “real” man works and provides for his family and whose worth is measured more by his material acquisitions and less by his humane and emotional composition. In Big Daddy’s world – and in Brick’s to a lesser extent – men don’t cry and emotional vulnerability is a weakness. Facing his own mortality and his son’s emotional ruin, Big Daddy is caught between the dictates of manhood and masculinity and risking vulnerability by taking his son’s outstretched hand.

In the end, the father takes what we hope is the wiser choice that will leave his son a legacy more enduring than blue stocks and bonds and strengthens Big Daddy’s acceptance of his imminent death. As bold as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” was as a film, it apparently was watered down significantly from its original Broadway production as a play. At the same time, Maggie jumps off her hot tin roof into the lie of “an announcement of life.” A child is coming, “sired by Brick out of Maggie the Cat,” she proclaims to a family caught off guard. But Maggie’s lie is about to become truth, we are led to believe, after Brick counters Sister Women’s declaration that Maggie is lying. “No!” Brick protests. “Truth is something desperate, and Maggie’s got it.” Then, in the closing scene before the credits role, we are left with the certainty that Brick and Maggie, alone and behind the locked door of their dimly lit bedroom, are going to give truth to her lie of a coming life. As bold as “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” was as a film, it apparently was watered down significantly from its original Broadway production as a play.

Newman reportedly was not fully satisfied with the movie treatment of Brick’s relationship with Skipper and pushed for a fuller – and more candid – exploration. In the end, he did not sacrifice his identity as a man or his masculinity and gave men of his day and those from generations to come the strength to be emotionally vested in another man, to want to be loved, to feel pain – and to cry. The film also opened the door for Taylor to the more daring and provocative roles that defined her as one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and respected actresses of the 1950’s and 60s. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” also came with a dark footnote for Taylor. During filming, her third husband, Michael Todd, was killed in a plane crash. In spite of that – or despite it – Taylor got her second Oscar nod as best actress. Another footnote is that Taylor was cast for the role over Barbara Bel Geddes, the actress who originated it on Broadway.

Bel Geddes would have to wait 20 years before she landed what become her career’s signature role as Miss Ellie, matriarch and moral compass of another dysfunctional family, the Ewings of television’s “Dallas.” Although it was nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” was apparently too steamy for conservative Academy voters at the 1959 awards ceremony. They passed the film in every category, each time in favor of the fluff – and safety – of “Gigi.” Multidimensional and layered with multiple themes of manhood, family, sexuality, certain death and mendacity, “Cat on a Hot Tin” roof speaks to the definition of manhood almost 60 years after its release. Brick Pollitt risked being pegged as weak and less than a man when he ventured into territory that was unexplored at the time – the heart of a man. In the end, he did not sacrifice his identity as a man or his masculinity and gave men of his day and those from generations to come the strength to be emotionally vested in another man, to want to be loved, to feel pain – and to cry. — Cat's Meow!

How Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Keeps Prowling Back to Broadway | Broadway Buzz | Broadway.com Cat's Meow! How Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Keeps Prowling Back to Broadway Features By Ryan Gilbert January 17, 2013 - 3:14PM Barbara Bel Geddes, Elizabeth Taylor & Scarlett Johansson as Maggie in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' About the Show Videos Maggie the Cat has slinked across a Broadway stage three times in the past decade! Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof contains all the elements of good drama: sex, greed, deception, alcoholism, violence and the specter of death. This Pulitzer Prize-winning dissection of a Southern family is receiving a lustrous revival at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre starring Scarlett Johansson and Benjamin Walker as Maggie and Brick Pollitt. How did Williams, a brilliant but troubled dramatist, develop his uniquely poetic voice, and why has Cat on a Hot Tin Roof remained one his most in-demand dramas? We let the cat out of the bag on this classic!

Southern Discomfort Thomas Lanier Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1911, to a family biographers compare to the dysfunctional ones in his plays. In 1931, Williams entered the University of Missouri, where his college roommate nicknamed him “Tennessee” and where he decided to become a playwright after seeing a production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghost. By age 24, the workaholic Williams had suffered a nervous breakdown, though he eventually graduated from the University of Iowa. Based in New Orleans, Williams juggled writing and menial jobs. His break came the winter of 1944, when The Glass Menagerie was successfully produced in Chicago, then became an instant hit in New York. The enormous success of Williams’ next play, the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Streetcar Named Desire, in 1947, cemented his reputation as a major American playwright.

After the Broadway runs of Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo and Camino Real, Williams introduced the Pollitt family, who spend a long night in their Mississippi Delta plantation house at war over the fate of "28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile." Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened at Broadway's Morosco Theater on March 24, 1955, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Barbara Bel Geddes as ambitious Maggie and Ben Gazzara as aging football hero Brick, Burl Ives and Mildred Dunnock as Big Daddy and Big Mama Pollitt, and Pat Hingle and Madeleine Sherwood as grasping brother Gooper and his babymaking wife, Mae. Kazan and Williams sparred during rehearsals, and the director convinced the playwright to revise the third act to allow for the return of Big Daddy and a more redeeming resolution between him and Brick.

Maggie the Movie Star Critics applauded the irresistibly soapy Cat, with Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times calling the play “a stunning drama,” praising Williams’ portrayal of “characters who try to escape from the loneliness of their lives into some form of understanding.” Atkinson considered the play to be Williams’ finest work because “…one of its great achievements is the honesty and simplicity of the craftsmanship.” Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Play, and won the 1955 Pulitzer Prize. An MGM film adaptation by director Richard Brooks opened in theaters on September 20, 1958, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Judith Anderson and Jack Carson, with Ives and Sherwood reprising their stage roles. Williams was displeased with the screenplay, which removed all explicit references to Brick’s possible homosexuality (in deference to Hollywood censors), emphasizing instead the theme of prolonged adolescence, with an upbeat ending. Williams felt that Brick’s repressed sexuality and grief over the death of his beloved pal Skipper was crucial, and he preferred his original ending, which reflected Brick’s weakness and sexual ambivalence.

Despite the playwright’s dismay, the Cat film (promoted with a sexy poster of Taylor in a white slip) was highly acclaimed and nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Taylor and Newman both received Oscar nominations for their performances. Williams Gets His Ending In 1974, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, exploded back into the public consciousness with a sizzling production starring Elizabeth Ashley, which moved to Broadway from the American Shakespeare Theatre in Connecticut. Williams restored much of the text he had removed from the original production, including a revised final act. "Tennessee told me that the role had never been played by a southern woman in a major production. Consequently, I knew the language and the cadencies instinctively," Ashley told Broadway.com. "I was in my sexual prime, and I used it flagrantly because that's what Maggie does. That's her weapon." Cat came to TV in 1976 starring the then husband-and-wife team of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, and featuring Laurence Olivier as Big Daddy and Maureen Stapleton as Big Mama.

Another television adaptation, directed by Jack Hofsiss and starring Jessica Lange, Tommy Lee Jones, Rip Torn, Kim Stanley, David Dukes and Penny Fuller, aired on August 19, 1984, and restored the sexual ambiguities that had been muted in the 1958 film. Stanley and Fuller were nominated for supporting actor Emmys, and Stanley took home the award. Williams continued to write plays, short stories, novels, poems, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs, but he became an increasingly paranoid and depressive alcoholic. Williams was found dead at age 71 in his suite at the Elysee Hotel in New York on February 25, 1983. A medical examiner's report showed that he choked to death on the cap from a bottle of eye drops. Prescription drugs were also found in the hotel room. Revive! Revive! Revive! A Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Howard Davies and featuring screen star Kathleen Turner, opened on March 21, 1990, at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre. Turner garnered a Best Actress Tony nomination, though her performance received mixed reviews.

Charles Durning, as Big Daddy, received a Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play, and Polly Holliday was nominated for her performance as Big Mama. A 2003 Broadway revival, headlined by film stars Ashley Judd and Jason Patric, opened on November 2 at the Music Box Theatre, and received lukewarm reviews. Ned Beatty and Margo Martindale were singled out by critics, for their work as Big Daddy and Big Mama, and Martindale received the production's only Tony nomination. The Kennedy Center produced a revival in 2004 featuring Mary Stuart Masterson as Maggie, Jeremy Davidson as Brick, George Grizzard as Big Daddy, Dana Ivey as Big Mama and Emily Skinner as Mae. Cat broke the color barrier with an all-African-American Broadway production directed by Debbie Allen, which opened on March 6, 2008, at the Broadhurst Theatre and became a sellout hit. Terrence Howard made his Broadway debut as Brick, alongside stage veterans James Earl Jones (Big Daddy), Phylicia Rashad (Big Mama) and Anika Noni Rose (Maggie).

In November 2009, Allen's production moved to London's West End, where Adrian Lester played Brick opposite Sanaa Lathan as Maggie. The West End staging received the 2010 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Revival of a Play. A Red-Hot Return for Scarlett Johansson On January 17, 2013, the third Broadway revival of Cat On A Hot Tin Roof in the past decade opens at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, starring Tony winner Scarlett Johansson as Maggie, Benjamin Walker as Brick, British star Ciaran Hinds as Big Daddy, Tony winner Debra Monk as Big Mama and Broadway vets Michael Park and Emily Bergl as Gooper and Mae. “It’s one of the greatest American plays ever written,” Walker said in a promotional video. “It has endured because it’s about issues we continue to deal with.” Johansson explained she was attracted to Cat because it “feels very fresh, timeless and vivid.” The production, Tony winner Rob Ashford’s directorial debut of a non-musical on Broadway, generated early attention when a character playing the ghost of Skipper was featured on stage during preview performances. The ghost was cut before press performances began.

Almost 60 years after its debut, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof continues to attract actors and audiences because of its timeless themes and irresistibly juicy relationships. The Pollitt family's secrets unfold slowly, and audiences connect with Williams’ sympathetic portrayal of characters whose fears and loneliness reflect their own.

Question: 'Maggie' and 'Brick Pollitt' are husband and wife in which play and film?
Answer: 'CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF'